Google kills british history- not
Vector One points us to an article in the Independent about how google are destroying Britain’s culture by not showing it on their maps. The interviewee, from the British Cartographic Society, is slightly hysterical about this- let’s face it google are not *that* evil, but I have to say I agree with the basic premise, and disagree with Vector One’s analysis.
The fact is that Google maps are not as rich and interesting as those the Ordnance Survey produces. I’ve said in the past that there is more to maps than simply directions from A to B. As more people rely on google and satnav for their map use, they will miss out on all the unexpectedly interesting things you might find whilst on the the way to B.
Vector One seems to be suggesting that this is more to do with people’s inability to read maps than the increasing ubiquity of digital alternatives. This, therefore, must be the fault of the UK government education policy. While this might be true to an extent, it’s a symptom rather than a cause in my opinion. Personally, I think the fault lies with the Ordnance Survey, they’ve missed a trick really. They could have produced their own widely available digital mapping eons ago rather than wrapping it in prohibitive licensing terms and restrictive interfaces. Given a choice of google’s over-simplified view of the world, or the rich detail of the Ordnance Survey in your satnav or digital device, maybe a lot more people would choose the OS.
It’s all down to cost - TeleAtlas data is cheaper than Ordnance Survey data.
(Though not necessary better.)
The Ordnance Survey needs to re-vamp it’s ancient and monopolising license agreements and crown copyright restrictions.
Solution
Make the data cheaper and easier to access - you get more people using it so more money would be made from more purchases.
OpenStreetMap are gaining huge amounts on making data available from more users inputing their content.
One more thought on the availability of Ordnance Survey data:
The February 2008 report “Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds” (http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf), commissioned by the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and HM Treasury, looked at the potential economic and social benefits of extending access to this kind of publicly held information and concluded that “in most cases, a marginal cost regime would be welfare improving- that is, the benefits to society of moving to a marginal cost regime outweighed the costs”. In this context, a marginal cost regime means selling particular categories of data at the cost of distribution i.e. effectively zero-cost in the case of digital OS data.
So, who reckons we’ll see free data from the OS any time soon?
ChrisW - ‘So, who reckons we’ll see free data from the OS any time soon?’
You’ve obviously not been paying attention to the OS Beta that has been running for the last few months….
http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/
@mapperz- agreed. The version of the article that I first saw didn’t mention openstreetmap at all, which is interesting!
@Rob- openspaces doesn’t give you free data at all. There’s a fundamental difference between allowing you to create an api for data that they maintain control over, and allowing you to download that data for use in your own applications. The terms of use for openspaces are in fact pretty restricted- there’s a link to the faq in my post. That’s the same kind of confusion that makes people think that google give their data away as well. As far as I know, the only people that do give you access to their data are the openstreetmap crowd, but if there are others I’d love to hear about it!
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Archaeogeek
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